Ladies and gentlemen of the jury: in all likelihood, you recognize me. I'm a well-known and, until recently, was a well-liked comedian. I specialize in satire, an often misunderstood form of humor. In my stand-up routines, I have long employed the rhetoric of those who hate as a means of excoriating society's hate-mongers. Until recently, that was legal. But under the recently passed Cultural Sensitivity Act, the use of certain words in any context is now a federal crime.

The prosecution will present evidence that I have used such words. Indeed, counsel will show video footage of my October 29th appearance on the TV talk show, The Midnight Express, in which, during my stand-up routine, I clearly utter a word—not once, but several times—it is now a felony to speak or to write. Were it possible to monitor one's thoughts, I've no doubt it would also be illegal to think such words. Luckily for the First Amendment, such technology does not yet exist.

I do not deny that I used the word in question. I do not disagree that the word is hateful and vile. And I happen to agree with those who berate and ostracize people who use those words as an extension of their hateful feelings. What I do notagree with is the government's passage into law of the Cultural Sensitivity Act—so blatant a violation of the free-speech clause of the First Amendment, it is now the subject of a civil-rights lawsuit wending its way through the courts.

Like a drill sergeant ordering recruits to perform push-ups, the Cultural Sensitivity Act is collective punishment with zero regard for context or intent. It lumps in comedians and satirists with the Ku Klux Klan and the American Nazi Party. It also sidesteps the hate-filled invective that infests our radios and TVs as its practitioners are careful not to use any of those newly-forbidden words. Instead of the epithets of old, the so-called "enemies of the state" are now called "urban predators," "illegals," "moral degenerates," "Feminazis," "welfare queens," and the like. Calls for violence against these groups is perfectly OK as long you don't use any of the forbidden words.

Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, I am clearly guilty of the so-called "crime" of which I am accused. But just because something is the law, is it morally just? In the case of the Cultural Sensitivity Act, I would argue an emphatic no! If you wish to strike a blow for the freedoms that so many of our fellow Americans have fought and died for, if you wish to send a message to this government and those who manipulate it that the suppression of free expression will not stand in our democratic republic, I urge you to find me not guilty. Thank you.